Friday, May 9, 2014

Film Atlas (Switzerland): Alpine Fire

Country: Switzerland

Title: Alpine
Fire / Hohenfeuer (1985)

Dotting the Swiss Alps are small, isolated farms where families
carve the steep slopes into terraces flat enough that crops can grow. These mountain folk live in picturesque
lodges but only just scrape by; their existence precarious in both senses of
the word. Alpine Fire is the story of one such family. The father is strict and
stern. The mother is quiet and religious. What animates their daily routine are
two teenage children: Belli, a bored intelligent girl whose tight leash is
beginning to chafe and Bub, a hardworking boy doubly cut off from the world by
deafness.

Belli has many reasons to feel stifled: geography, family, their
religious and financial asceticism, her limited prospects. Meanwhile, Bub’s
impairment and lack of education have contributed to a surly and temperamental
disposition. He clashes frequently with his father, who regards him as stubborn
and inscrutable though they have much in common, not least their fits of
rage. Yet Bub finds solace in his sister, who understands him with preternatural
sibling ease. After a costly tantrum, Bub goes into semi-self-enforced exile,
dwelling in caves in the upper reaches of the mountain and constructing
colossal cairns. Belli visits him in secret and soon they consummate a
long-simmering love. Though they have found a measure of happiness, practical
consequences intrude.

It goes without saying that any film set in the Swiss Alps
should be absolutely gorgeous and Alpine Fire delivers, capturing the texture
of stone, wood grain, lichen and snow. Even the interiors, sunlit by day and
lantern-lit by night, have a timeless rustic quality. But director Fredi Murer
shows us that the same mountain cottages that make for pretty postcards can
also be hermetic hells of daily toil and maddening monotony. Fenced in by
white-picket peaks, seeing no one except family, it’s no wonder that tempers
are short, desires sublimated and outlets few. What is surprisingly is that
Murer could build such a deeply-felt and honestly sensitive character study
from the potentially exploitive premise of an incestuous romance. A big
debt is owed to the convincing performances of Thomas Nock and Johanna Lier as
the brother and sister couple, but it also helps that the salacious angle is
only a single facet of the film’s more universal concerns: mankind’s
relationship to nature, the ravages of loneliness both physical and mental, the
barriers between generations, the emotional maelstrom of puberty, love’s
disregard for society’s rules and the painful struggle for inner peace.